The renovation of North Tucker Boulevard is nearing completion. This section of Tucker north of Washington Avenue was built as a tunnel for the Illinois Terminal Railroad in 1931. The tunnel has now been filled up with styrofoam and dirt and the last remnants will be buried soon. The real impact of the new Tucker Boulevard will not be felt until the completion of the new Mississippi River Bridge in 2015. The new bridge will not only accommodate traffic coming from Illinois to Interstate 70 West (and vice versa ), it will also directly connect to downtown St. Louis, via the new North Tucker Boulevard.

Looking south from Cole towards downtown

The new road deck in front of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The new North Tucker will greatly enhance the connection between Soulard and Lafayette Square to the south and Crown Square in Old North St. Louis and Illinois to the north of downtown. In fact, it should be relatively simple to connect 14th Street from Crown Square to the new Tucker Boulevard and create a direct connection between it and downtown.

A tunnel no more

The last remnants of the Illinois Terminal Railroad are buried

Trains of the Illinois Terminal Railroad (Photo courtesy of St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has more photos of the digging of the Tucker Tunnel in 1931.

The entrance to Downtown St. Louis

The new Tucker Boulevard will not only become a major thoroughfare through the heart of downtown, it could become a destination, with the intersection with Washington as its center point. Tucker is already lined with beautiful architecture as some of downtown’s most interesting buildings can be found here.

St. Patrick's Center at 800 North Tucker

The Globe-Democrat Building, originally Illinois Terminal Railroad Station

Entrance Globe-Democrat Building

Washington Apartments on Tucker & Washington. (Lucas Ave corner)

The beautiful Bogen Building and a newly repaved Lucas Ave

A peek west down Lucas Avenue with Citymuseum in background

The planned renovation of Jefferson Arms bodes well for Tucker

Park Pacific garage on Tucker

Now, all is not well. There are still plenty of issues that need improvement. For instance, there is a sea of parking lots from just north of Washington all the way up to Cole Street. The new boulevard might spawn future investment in mixed-use development of 5-8 story residential with street level retail.

Parking jungle between Washington and Cole

Another big question still remains about Interstate 70 slicing through downtown, effectively cutting it off from the riverfront. Once the new bridge opens, Illinois traffic towards I-70 West will be redirected and no longer use Poplar Street bridge or the downtown section of I-70. Many downtown St. Louis-bound Illinoisans soon will be using the new bridge as well. One group that advocates for removal of the downtown section of I-70 is City to River. They have interesting ideas on how to reconnect downtown to the riverfront.

Interstate 70 dividing downtown and the riverfront.

Rendering of New Mississippi River Bridge (Photo courtesy of MoDot)

The new River Bridge will feed directly into downtown St. Louis

Missouri approach to the new bridge (Photo courtesy of MoDot)

It remains to be seen to what extent the new North Tucker Boulevard and the new Mississippi River Bridge will impact downtown. We do know that it will create new and easy connections between Illinois, Old North, Downtown, Lafayette Square and Soulard, right through the core of downtown St. Louis. Developers, please take a good hard look at the new opportunities.

5 Comments Already!

Great coverage of this project. The car-covered parking lots are RIPE for new office and residential TOWERS – not midrises. New towers in this area would do wonders for this part of downtown and for downtown in general.

Great article…..thanks for the update on this big project. I would agree that Tucker and Washington area can really benefit from additional traffic (car and pedestrian) that will inevitably use this new route in and out of Downtown.

It’s a shame they don’t show the south side of Tucker and Lucas where the “street” is barely a slightly wider alley which not isn’t even on a cleaning schedule or parking regulation of any sorts, but is maintained in no way at at all so at times when it isn’t blocked with a hodge podge of mispark vehicles it really isn’t passable anyway.